


The Quartermaster

by opalescentgold



Category: Doctor Who, James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Adrenaline Junkie, BAMF Q, Canon-Typical Violence, James Bond Being James Bond, M/M, Major Character Injury, Post-SPECTRE, SPECTRE Fix-It, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 15:56:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11535522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalescentgold/pseuds/opalescentgold
Summary: When Bond meets the Quartermaster for the first time, he's dying.When Bond meets the Quartermaster for the second time, he's near death.When Bond meets the Quartermaster for the third time, he's chasing death.





	The Quartermaster

**Author's Note:**

> _For Crossover Day and Anon Prompt #132: Q is actually a time traveler from the future._

Bond first meets Q when he’s on the verge of dying.

Night is falling in Russia, and the cold is unbearable. Everyone with any common sense is already indoors, and so, no one notices the injured agent lying in a side-alley, bleeding out from a gunshot wound and drifting in and out of consciousness.

Bond sighs and closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see the snow falling from the sky. It seems wrong that he should die such a violent death in the face of pure and delicate beauty. He doesn’t want to see the white snowflakes being stained and then melted by his red blood.

There’s a numbing fog stealing over his mind, even as the cold snakes icy tendrils through his veins to grip his muscles and shake him furiously. He’s only been a Double-Oh for a year, but he’s flirted with death often enough to know that this is blood loss speaking, and he hasn’t got much time left.

He’s lost his Walther somewhere. His earpiece has long since been destroyed. He’s tired, and he’s cold, and he hurts.

Maybe it’s time to sleep and never wake up again.

Bond sees no point in denying the inevitable.

Just as the combination of the Russian winter and the gunshot wound threaten to pull him down into the darkness, however, he hears an odd noise: a mechanical whirl paired with the tired, heavy wheezing of a man who’s run for hours and hours on end but can’t afford to stop because he’s being chased and he can’t get caught.

It rouses his curiosity enough for him to go through the enormous effort of opening his eyes again. Everything’s a bit blurry and faded, but Bond thinks that he sees a large blue box a few metres away from him, which definitely wasn’t there before.

Huh. So he’s starting to hallucinate now. Good to know.

He’s ready to close his eyes and go back to enjoying the quiet when there’s the crunch of boots on pavement. Even so close to death, training wins out, and Bond fights against the sweet pull of rest to squint. He doesn’t have to try very hard; there’s a man leaning over him.

He’s pretty, is the first thing Bond’s dazed mind works out. A young face with clear European features, definitely not Russian. Messy dark curls and intelligent green eyes and very red lips. And red cheeks - probably from the cold. He’s frowning, but Bond’s vision is certainly blurring now, and the darkness is calling.

“Christ, Bond,” and his voice is _British_ , of all things, and surprisingly posh, “you’ve made a mess of things again, haven’t you?”

The last thing that crosses Bond’s mind is the abrupt conviction that they’ve never met before, and he’s been under an alias this entire time, so how does this stranger know his name?

Three days later, Bond wakes up in MI6 Medical, only to be told that he was dropped off on their doorstep three days and four hours ago, and their security cameras caught nothing and nobody. Ten more minutes later, the doctor says, and he would have died.

Bond has the vaguest memory of a strange noise and green eyes, but that doesn’t explain how he was brought from Russia to Britain in apparently less than fifteen minutes, so he says nothing and merely shrugs when M asks him to explain, to her frustration.

* * *

Two years later, Bond is thoroughly out of his comfort zone. He came into this mission expecting a supervillain, not...whatever _this_ is.

“Ex-ter-min-ate!” the...thing shrieks in electronic, staccato bursts and points what looks like a cooking whisk at Bond. He has only the sudden holler of his instincts and the hair on his nape sticking up to warn him before what looks like a laser shoots out of it and destroys the wall behind him.

Bond glances at the wall, where a small fire has started. Okay then. Best not to get hit it is. “What in the bloody world are you?” he asks the creature, which has proven to be sentient even if it looks like some mad scientist’s misbegotten project.

“I am a Da-lek. You will be ex-ter-min-ated!” The self-proclaimed “Dalek” shoots again, and Bond ducks his head seconds before it would have been exploded. Raising his Walther, he shoots once, twice, thrice, and watches the bullets ricochet off the Dalek’s casing with a growing sense of unease.

It looks like it’s made of fucking _metal_.

He backs up a step, and immediately the Dalek’s single-eye shifts to follow his progress. Another shot misses his arm by a centimetre. The target Bond was sent after is lying dead on the floor, his villain base is starting to go up in flames, judging by the smoke he can smell and the heat blasting his back, and Bond is facing what appears to be an unknown life form with equally unknown technology.

Great. Just great.

“I don’t suppose we can talk about this?” Bond asks mildly.

In response, the Dalek starts rolling towards him rapidly and shoots again. He takes the hint and, dodging to the left before his chest can get blown into pieces, runs for the exit.

“Ex-ter-min-ate!” From the sounds of it, the Dalek is right behind him, although there are no footsteps to indicate pursuit. Cursing up a blue streak, Bond turns his upper body slightly to shoot at the damn thing, although the effect is the same as before. He’s only wasting bullets.

It’s fucking _fast_. And it won’t _stop._

Bond dashes through the hallways, pushing his way past startled minions and henchmen. Anyone who seems the slightest bit inclined to try and stop him ends up catching sight of the monster he’s running from. The most common response is to start staring in bewilderment rather than shooting at him, which is their greatest mistake seeing as then they all die, courtesy of laser shots.

He takes a left, then a right, and ignores the screams coming from behind him. The second in command of this particular organisation is waiting for him at an intersection with a machine gun. Bond runs right past him, to his clear surprise, and continues moving.

From behind him, he hears the now familiar, “EX-TER-MIN-ATE,” and then the pop-pop of the machine gun. There’s the swish of the laser burst and the thud of a body hitting the floor. “Fuck,” Bond mutters under his breath, because if a machine gun can’t stop this thing, then what can?

His breath is coming fast and hard, his heart thudding in his chest. Adrenaline sharpens the world around him, and it’s been a very long time since he’s been this afraid. This fear comes from a fear of the unknown, which he rarely encounters.

Terrorists, he knows. Drugs, guns, and torture - those are all known, can be fought. This is something else entirely.

Bond doesn’t know what to do. And so he runs and ignores the corpses he’s leaving behind him.

At last, he turns a right and finds himself confronted with a wall.

 _Shit_.

A glance to the right and left confirms his worst fears. He’s at a dead end. There’s no way out.

Bond spins around. The Dalek is right around the corner; he can hear it, he can _feel_ it. His gun doesn’t work on this thing; a fucking machine gun doesn’t work on this thing; there’s no damned way he’s going to get out of this one.

So this is how he’s going to die.

He takes a deep breath and lifts his chin. If James Bond is going to die, then he’s going to die while looking death in the face. He refuses to cower. Briefly, he thinks that it would have been nice to at least die at the hands of something he understood, but well, you can’t have everything.

The Dalek rolls around the corner and pinpoints him with its creepy eye immediately. “Ex-ter-min-ate!” it repeats triumphantly and aims its whisk. There’s a flash of light that no doubt signifies it’s charging up for a shot, and he’s going to die.

He’s going to die.

Bond focuses on his breathing as the world slows down to a blur, to the last moments where life and death are just mere suggestions, and the only thing that matters is the heart that continues to pump on his chest, the air that continues to move in his lungs. He breathes. In. Out. In. Ou -

At first, he thinks he must be imaging it. But no, the wheezing, mechanical sound is getting louder, and the Dalek is, wonder of all wonders, hesitating. He’s still alive. And he’s watching a fucking blue _police box_ appear out of _nowhere_ behind the Dalek.

Bond has a much higher tolerance for nonsense than normal folks. But this is growing beyond even him. First, the death machine that can talk and chase him down and now a big box materialising from empty air?

“What. The bloody fuck.” Perhaps, oddest of all, the sound and the box seem somewhat familiar.

Bond frowns and furrows his brow as he thinks. There’s something. Something about a cold, painful Russian night in the midst of winter.

The Dalek makes an odd whirring noise and turns around, completely turning its back on Bond, which would be useful, if he could actually kill it.

With a final thud, the box stops flickering in and out to turn into a regular old fucking blue box in the middle of the hallway that was not bloody well there before. And, because that isn’t weird enough, a moment later, the doors swing open and a man steps out.

Now, _him_ , Bond definitely remembers.

There’s that same pretty face, those bright green eyes. He’s wearing the most atrocious rusted yellow cardigan known to mankind with a black tie and brown trousers. Rather than expressing confusion or horror at the scene before him, which he takes in with a glance, the man is tapping what looks like a pen on the palm of his hand with an annoyed frown.

“What have you done now?” he asks with that posh, British accent. “I’m getting tired of cleaning up your kinds’ messes, you know. I have better things to do with my time.”

The Dalek makes a horrid, high-pitched screech that has Bond wincing. “You are the Quar-ter-mas-ter! The enemy of all Da-leks! You will be ex-ter-min-ated!” With a certain murderous sentiment that it was lacking before, it raises and aims the whisk.

The “Quartermaster” merely scoffs and rolls his eyes, which is pretty cheeky of him considering the number of people this thing has killed in the past ten minutes. “Like I haven’t heard that one before,” he mutters.

Raising his pen, he clicks the top. A green light shines from the end of it, and he scans the Dalek with it. Sadly, instead of the metal monster exploding, which Bond was halfway expecting, nothing happens, although the Quartermaster nods to himself and then hops to the left to avoid the laser blast.

The wall behind the Quartermaster crumbles into rubble.

Then, he glances at Bond for the first time, zeroing in on the Walther that’s dangling uselessly from his hand. “Hey, you there,” he calls out. “You know how to shot a gun?”

Bond raises his eyebrows. His memory’s hardly to be trusted, but he could have sworn that the last time they met, this guy knew his name. Also, he has a bad feeling about this question. “...yeah. I’d say so.”

The Quartermaster grins and runs over to Bond’s side, deftly avoiding all the shots aimed at him. Bond watches him approach warily. On one hand, he seems to know more about the Dalek than anyone else - not hard - and an enemy of my enemy and all that; on the other hand, he’s attracting the Dalek’s shots _towards_ Bond.

“Give me your gun,” the Quartermaster demands when he reaches Bond.

Bond hesitates. It goes against the grain to give his gun to a stranger, even if this stranger once helped him before and probably knows more about what’s going on then Bond does and the gun is ineffective anyway.

“Come on!” the Quartermaster insists impatiently. “Oh, and duck.”

He does. Just in time for the shot to miss him and annihilate the wall behind him to reveal more searingly white hallways. The former master of this place wasn’t very decorative.

“Ex-ter-min-ate!” the Dalek shrieks and begins rolling forward again.

Bond gives his gun to the Quartermaster, who smiles, quick and fox-sly, before starting to fiddle with it with his pen. Bond has no idea what he’s doing, but he really should hurry it up. “Hey…”

The Dalek shoots again, this time directly at the Quartermaster, who isn’t even looking up. “Watch it!” Bond hisses, grabbing the idiot’s wrist and yanking him closer to Bond. The shot brushes past that ugly cardigan and starts another small fire.

“Do you know your way around this place?” the Quartermaster asks without stopping whatever it is that he’s doing to Bond’s poor Walther.

“No,” Bond grits out. “But anywhere is better than here.”

The Quartermaster nods. “I need, umm, five minutes. Just drag me along and don’t let me run into a wall.”

It takes a moment for the meaning behind his words to sink in. In that time, the Dalek fires another shot that takes out the ceiling and would have crushed them both with debris if Bond hadn’t instinctively pulled them backwards.

Then - “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Bond groans.

The Quartermaster makes an absent-mindedly acknowledging noise and focuses the green light from his pen on the gun barrel.

Bond exhales roughly through his nose and starts running again, this time dragging the useless prat behind him.

* * *

The building’s a burning, ruined wreck, and Bond’s muscles are ready to go the same way by the time the Quartermaster stops in his tracks suddenly, only to be dragged another two metres by Bond’s momentum. “I’ve got it!”

Bond growls and turns around irritably. “Got what?”

“Here.” Without warning, his Walther is tossed at him, and Bond catches it instinctively. It’s heavier, he notices at once, although there are no outer differences that he can see. “You only have one shot,” the Quartermaster warns him, “so you have to make it count.”

Bond nods, mind already racing. He must have done _something_ to the gun to make it work against the Dalek then. “Get behind that corner,” he orders, already moving to position himself in the middle of the hallway and settle into a ready stance.

“It’s fine,” the Quartermaster says with frustrating blitheness. “I don’t die easily. They’ve tried more than once. Now, aim for their eyestalk; that’s where they’re weakest. One shot, as soon as it enters this hallway, understood?”

Bond’s eye twitches at the patronising words. “This isn’t exactly my first time,” he snaps. “Besides, what is that thing in the first place? And why do you know this much about it? Who the hell are you?”

“It’s a Dalek. A killing machine, really. Hateful, frightful creatures. As for how I know so much about them, I’ve fought them many times. Like I said, I’m generally stuck cleaning up their messes. As for me, I’m the Quartermaster. Call me Q.” Q smiles politely as if this is all perfectly normal.

Bond almost wants to shoot _him_. “That doesn’t bloody tell me anything! Where did this Dalek come from? Why haven’t I ever heard of it? Why the hell do you travel around in a blue police box that can teleport, for God’s sake?”

“Well, they’re aliens from the planet Skaro; of course you haven’t heard about them. It would be weird if you did. And my TARDIS doesn’t teleport, thank you very much; it travels through time and space,” Q corrects him primly.

Bond doesn’t yet have the necessary breath to scream at the pure _absurdity_ of that answer before there’s a scraping sound above the crackle of the flames. His attention snaps back towards the end of the hallway immediately, his mind shoving aside gibberish like aliens and time travel in favour of falling into what he does know: the gun and himself.

A moment passes. Two. Bond breathes in. And out. In. Out.

The Dalek appears, light glowing at the end of its whisk. Bond takes a second to aim, a second to breathe, and a second to shoot.

It’s a second too long. The Dalek shoots, and even as the shot glances by Bond’s left shoulder, he’s squeezing his own trigger.

It isn’t a bullet that his gun shoots. It’s a beam of light similar to the Dalek’s own weapon, and Bond doesn’t even have time to flinch in surprise before the light hits the Dalek’s eye - bullseye - and the Dalek _screams_ and finally, finally _stops_.

Bond stands up straight, panting, and just stares for a while. Then, he registers the pain, the blood dripping down his arm, and looks down to see the mess that’s his shoulder.

“Well, look at that,” Q says softly. “You are a good shot, after all. What’s your name?”

That, at least, Bond can answer even if his mind has pretty much gone perfectly blank with equal amounts of shock and agony. The hallway looks both red and seems to be spinning around him. His throat feels dry and scratchy; he doesn’t know how he can register that over the roar of his shoulder. “Bond. James Bond.”

“Bond, James Bond, you need medical help. Where should I take you?”

Bond slumps to his knees, going hot and then cold. He can’t quite. This all feels like a dream, a very odd one; he must be on drugs, dreaming of aliens with cooking whisks and a man bracing him so he doesn’t hit the floor with his face.

“-ond. Bond! I need to know where to take you. Tell me where to take you. _Now._ ” There’s a firm command being spoken in his ear, and this, at least, he remembers from Russia.

“Vauxhall Cross,” he mutters and then is gone.

A week later, Bond is roused to consciousness, dizzy with the good drugs and fairly certain he must have made the whole thing up. It’s only when M comes in the next day, demanding to know why the target’s entire base was burned to the ground, that he starts to consider otherwise.

Bond claims temporary amnesia - he can’t very well start rambling about Daleks and Quartermasters; he shudders to think of how many Psych sessions he’d get for that - and tries to validate his delusions.

The one time he searches the internet for ‘Dalek’, he gets precisely zero results. And searching for ‘Quartermaster’ gets him nothing useful.

Uneasily, he does the only thing he can do and pushes the incident to the back of his mind for drunken nights and hazy dreams.

* * *

Several years later, Bond is staring down retirement and a certain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, stuck between a rock and a hard place. He leaves the latter in M’s custody and attempts to fight the former by running away with Madeleine.

After three months of increasing arguments and restless wandering, Bond strolls through the streets of Paris with his hands in his pockets and doesn’t try to kid himself into thinking he’s happy. A commotion from behind draws his attention, and he turns, instincts on high alert.

A man rushes past him, shoving passerby out of his way and, by the looks of it, chasing someone. Bond catches a glimpse of his face - intense green eyes, red lips, dark curls - and is moving before he has a chance to think, to doubt, chasing after Q.

They end up in an old, abandoned building, where Q braces himself on his knees and mutters a curse. Lost the target then.

“Oh,” Q says when he notices Bond, “it’s you. Hello Bond, James Bond.” And he smiles, quick and bright and clever.

“You can just call me Bond,” Bond says dryly but can’t deny the skip of his heart nor the adrenaline turning the world crystalline. He’s missed this. “What are you doing here, Q? Don’t tell me another Dalek is here again.”

“No, no,” Q hurries to assure. “Not a Dalek. Just Cybermen.” He pauses to look at Bond curiously and with a hint of thoughtfulness. “Do you want to come with?”

Bond refuses to be ashamed of how quickly he says yes.

* * *

When night falls, and the Cybermen have been defeated, Q braces his hand against his TARDIS - Time and Relative Dimension in Space, he explained - and tilts his head to the side when he looks at Bond. “Do you want to come with?” he asks again.

Bond stares back at him. He thinks of his mandatory retirement at MI6, thinks of how his life with Madeleine is most likely going to be - more arguments, more psychoanalysis at dinner, more blasted, _boring_ domesticity - and thinks of the triumphant delight singing through his chest.

“Let me make a call,” he says.

* * *

“You know,” Bond says some years later as they’re travelling to the Russian Revolution of 1917, “the first time I met you, you were saving my life in Russia.”

Q looks up from where he’s fiddling with the TARDIS console. “Really?”

“Mmmm. I was bleeding out from a gunshot wound to the gut and then I looked up and there you were.” He takes apart his modified Walther and starts cleaning it.

Q blinks and smiles that smile that still charms and devastates Bond in equal measure, even after all these years. “Tell me more.”

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is [here](https://opalescentgold.tumblr.com/).
> 
> My thanks to my lovely beta, [Linorien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linorien/pseuds/Linorien/), for looking this over!


End file.
